Sonia: Tough task?

New Delhi, Jan. 3: The Congress’s Rajya Sabha MPs are making a beeline for Lok Sabha tickets.

At least 10 of the 68 Upper House MPs have sounded out party president Sonia Gandhi on their electoral aspirations. Some zeroed in on prospective constituencies and began to nurse them in the hope their claims would be honoured.

Those in the queue include central ministers Ambika Soni, G.K. Vasan, Vayalar Ravi and Anand Sharma. Soni, who is the tourism and culture minister, is looking at Hoshiarpur in Punjab, said Congress sources. The seat is with Avinash Rai Khanna of the BJP.

Vasan, the son of the late Tamil Nadu Congress leader, G.K. Moopanar, was said to be unhappy with being “accommodated” in the Upper House and later “rewarded” with ministership in lieu of his late father’s loyalty to the Gandhis and wanted to “prove” his political mettle by plunging into the Lok Sabha battleground.

Rashid Alvi, who won a Lok Sabha election in 1999 on a BSP ticket from Uttar Pradesh’s Amroha but left the party thereafter to join the Congress, said: “I have informed Madam (Sonia) that I am ready to contest because my real interest lies in the Lok Sabha.” Alvi will know where he stands after January 20 when the Congress is expected to sew up its alliance with the Samajwadi Party and know how many seats are in its kitty.

Other Congress notables eyeing the Lower House include general secretary B.K. Hari Prasad and Delhi party president Jai Prakash Aggarwal. Undeterred by his defeat from Bangalore (central) in 2004 and the Congress’s reverses in Karnataka, Hari Prasad reportedly told his leaders he wanted to have a shot at it again.

Ravi, the parliamentary affairs minister, is looking at Allepey or Atinangal in Kerala.

Unlike Prasad, sources said luck was perhaps on Ravi’s side because given Kerala’s proven history to swing between the Left-led front and the Congress-headed one, it was the Congress’s turn in 2009 to rake in the votes.

Asked what impelled such MPs to leave the comfort and security of the six-year tenure assured in the Upper House and turn gladiators, Yogendra Yadav, a senior fellow at Delhi’s Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, said: “A Lok Sabha victory does bring greater legitimacy and supports claims to power even within the Congress where rewards are distributed from above. Since a Rajya Sabha membership has come to be seen as simple political patronage by party bosses, some independent evidence of popularity does make a small difference.”

This was perhaps why Rajya Sabha members elected from states virtually alien to them were forced to genuflect to the chief minister and his MLAs before they were guaranteed their votes.

“That’s when I realised that a chief minister is often more powerful than the Prime Minister,” an MP from a western state exclaimed. Sources said the changing composition of the Upper House, with a higher presence of industrialists and top-end “achievers”, made the more orthodox politicos a bit uncomfortable.

“Most people still go into politics to feel the pulse of the masses and energise themselves by connecting directly with the crowds. This is possible if they fight a Lok Sabha election. The Rajya Sabha is more genteel,” said Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a political scientist and columnist.

The big bonus for the Rajya Sabha members is if they lose a direct election, they can always return to their first home.